Momix: 'Botanica' at Proctor's Theatre, 05/02/09

SCHENECTADY — The Momix works “Lunar Sea” and “Opus Cactus” explored the natural world as translated through the fertile imagination of artistic director Moses Pendleton. The company’s newest production, “Botanica,” which was onstage Saturday at Proctor’s Theatre, covers similar territory. It’s far from a retread, however—in fact, it is the most wondrous of the three works, rife with gorgeous and disarming images.

Over the last two decades, Pendleton has honed his unique and thrilling combination of clever lighting illusions, fantastical props and sensuous, expressive choreography. As lovely as his ten dancers are, they are also fabulous technicians whose precision, strength and impeccable timing create the framework on which Pendleton hangs his magical tapestries.
Rather than being manipulated by the dancers, the props for “Botanica” seem to become part of their bodies. Five marigolds spin and flutter in their bright red circlets of petals. A jellyfish—or perhaps she’s a spider—whirls within her beaded web. A giant dinosaur skeleton, the dancer/puppeteer within it barely visible, cozies up to and then consumes its rider. A vast, veined leaf or petal expands and folds in heart-stoppingly slow motion. Duets are danced with golden trees as partners, and snowy owls whoosh by on roller skates.

In other sections, the dancers mesh to make lush, intertwined shapes, in the organic, flowing style pioneered by Pilobolus, of which Pendleton was a founder. They are tiny organisms mating and multiplying, or futuristic insects with tubular loops where their arms should be. A quartet of black-and-white hornets leaps and stomps, flexing their biceps, before their short life span catches up to them. Each one of a herd of regal centaurs is formed by two dancers (one in front, one in back) who canter and prance together like a single being.

Pendleton does charming things with black lights and fluorescence; here three dancers are deconstructed into glowing arms and legs moving against utter darkness as they become plants, butterflies, snakes and birds. In another brilliant illusion, a solo danced horizontally against a slanted mirror results in the emergence of an amazingly flexible eight-limbed creature. Projected backdrops magnify a dewy leaf, an enormous rose, a mountainside and a cloudy sky.

The transporting score is an integral part of the experience, with moody tracks from Peter Gabriel’s “Birdy” soundtrack, Hindi chanting from Deva Premal, tabla drumming from Suphala, a movement from Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and techno music from Delerium and BlueTech. Like “Botanica” itself, it is earthly and otherworldly at once—a magnificent vision of the everyday miracles around us.

Tresca Weinstein, a freelance writer from Canaan, N.Y., is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.

Theater review

MOMIX: “BOTANICA”

Where: Proctor’s Theatre, 432 State St., Schenectady

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Length: Two hours and fifteen minutes, one intermission

The crowd: About 1,200 wildly enthusiastic audience members of all ages.